Sixteen
by Micayasha
Summary: She's sixteen now, practically a woman, and Roy can't believe she was the little girl in all those pictures just fourteen years ago. [Papa!Roy] COMPLETE


**x.X.x  
Sixteen**

She's sixteen now, practically a woman, and Roy can't believe she was the little girl in all those pictures just fourteen years ago. He still goes back to that phone booth sometimes, just stands in it a while. Lieutenant Hawkeye found him there, once, crying like a baby, and just led him home with an arm around his shoulders.

He is dangerously close to crying like that again. She's sixteen now, practically a woman, and Roy can't believe she's going on dates. He looks at her lips and sees gloss that isn't natural, and her hair hasn't been in high pigtails since she was eight. She's as talented with knives as her father.

She pronounces R and L perfectly now – no W's where they used to be. She has all her adult teeth – the Tooth Fairy hasn't visited in years. She's giving speeches about how they can't tell her what to do, she's all grown up now, and it isn't _fair_ that she's grounded, they're out to ruin her life…

Roy doesn't want to recognize that she's a teenager. Even more, he doesn't want to recognize that soon she really _will_ be all grown up, and he'll be an old man, giving her away at her wedding. He's already into his forties, and that doesn't seem right.

The knock on his door is completely unexpected, and Roy seriously considers not answering it (because, after all, it _is_ two in the morning) but there is a tone of desperation to it, and when a voice joins the pounding in shrill panic he is at the door faster than he thought possible, his glass of wine spilled all over the table.

Because it is _her_ voice, and she is scared.

He opens the door and she hits him with the force of a cannonball, her arms winding around his middle with strength he didn't know she had. Out of reflex he returns the hug, stroking her long hair. Her whole body is shaking.

"I'm sorry," she whimpers into his shoulder, her voice muffled. "I'm really sorry, Roy, I'm _really_ sorry, I just wasn't _thinking_ – "

Gradually things come into focus, and he takes in her tousled hair, her trembling form, the quaver in her voice and the wet warmth seeping through his shirt into his shoulder.

"Elysia," he says, his voice cold steel the way it hasn't been since he retired from the military, and some part of his mind is wondering with cold detachment if it's possible to kill a man by simply thinking very hard, "what did he do to you?"

"No," she sobs, shaking her head and burrowing deeper into his embrace as he suddenly remembers to shut the door against the cold autumn winds seeping into his warm living room. "He didn't force me, but I was just too _stupid_, and I know he loves me but I should _never_ have – I'm _sorry_ – "

"Elysia," he repeats, his voice gentler. Silly of him to think her boyfriend could have physically forced her – she has a knife strapped to each thigh constantly. He had taught her to fight and fight well, and if she thought there was _any _threat to her at all, she could have done some _serious_ damage to her attacker. He pulls away the slightest bit to pull her into the kitchen. She unwinds herself from him with a muttered, quivering apology and sits at the kitchen table, scrubbing at her eyes viciously. He tugs his handkerchief from his pocket and wipes her cheeks more gently. The cloth comes away black where her eye-makeup has streamed down her face.

Elysia lets her hands fall to clutch her knees in a white-knuckled grip, and Roy cleans away the last of the black smears on her cheeks. Tears still pool in her cornflower-blue eyes, but she swallows and forces them back. "I was stupid," she says again, her voice catching between words in half-hiccups from her sobbing.

"Elysia, please tell me." But he has a good idea of what has her so rattled.

"Daddy would be _ashamed –_ "

"Your father thought you were worth more than anything on this earth," Roy tells her firmly. "There is nothing humanly possible for you to do that would make him ashamed of you. He was so proud of you that ever since you were born to the time he died he would call me at one in the morning to tell me how cute you looked in your new pajamas."

"I know," she says, because she has been told many times, "but I've really done it this time. I might as well wear _black_ on my wedding day."

Yes, that is what he was afraid of.

"I'm sorry that you regret it." He isn't sure what else to say. "I…"

Elysia smiles, her bottom lip still quivering but her eyes bright with warmth. "I just wanted a hug," she informs him with a little shrug, "because there's nothing else that can be done. It's my own fault, Roy, I know. But… Mama wouldn't quite understand."

Roy thinks Gracia would understand more than himself, but doesn't say so. He thinks it's less a matter of understanding and more a matter of the difference between a parent and an uncle. He may as well be her surrogate father, for all that he's never seen Gracia in the light that Elysia's real father did. But right now she doesn't need a parent. She just needs a hug.

"I haven't cried in years," she says all of a sudden, her voice wavering dangerously – her recovery seems to have been short-lived.

"I know." Roy smiles. "Not since you were thirteen, I think."

She nods, and then the dam bursts again and he has an armful of crying young woman. He was never very good with tears, but helping to raise a little girl got him very used to kissing boo-boos and chasing away nightmares, so why should this be any different?

He spends the rest of the night sitting on his uncomfortable wooden kitchen chair with Maes' daughter in his lap, sobbing in a way he cannot remember hearing since her father's funeral. Desperate, full of regret – and with the same kind of total incomprehension.

Then, it was a lack of understanding of death. It had never occurred to Elysia, apple of her father's eye, that there was _anything_ able to separate them. It wasn't stubborn inacceptance – it was a little girl's view of the world, that bad things did _not_ happen to good people, and if Daddy's work was so important he wouldn't abandon it. Roy remembers his tears at the funeral - half for the loss of the best friend he'd ever had - and half for the look on Elysia's round, tear-streaked face when she was told that he really was gone. That no, it wasn't that he'd _wanted_ to leave. He'd wanted to stay, they promised her. But he couldn't.

Now, she can't understand how she can be growing up already, and feel so on her own. It shouldn't feel so lonely to be an adult. Selfishly, he is almost glad of her tears, even if he never wished any harm upon her, because if she is crying in his arms it means sixteen might not be _totally_ 'grown up' yet. Maybe she can still find a use for him (and his shoulder) for a few years yet.


End file.
